Despite the majority of transportation industry practitioners’ agreement that the full cost of a project—including long-term operation and maintenance—should be considered in decision-making, only 48 percent of practitioners said their agencies could effectively predict future costs, according to a survey released as part of a new report by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Eno Center for Transportation.

State and federal funding for transportation projects is stagnant, yet Maximizing the Value of Investment Using Life Cycle Cost Analysis finds that currently most of the limited transportation funding dollars is invested without considering long-term operating costs. To improve decision making, the report gives nine policy recommendations on how to implement Life Cycle Cost Analysis, a process which ensures total costs related to an asset— including the cost to operate the infrastructure in the future—is accounted for.